Ok so I hedged my bets on this one. I originally had this listed as just “single” in the first three mentions of this but I went ahead and added “married” to it because I realized more and more I’m hearing about single youth workers who are having trouble getting jobs.
So here’s the deal churches. Why do you care?
I know that there are some great things about being a single youth worker. You have more of everything. More time, freedom, etc. But it’s lame in my opinion that a church would think because you are single that they are going to get more work out of you. The reality is that most churches pay an employee for 40-55 hours a week of work and it shouldn’t matter if you are single of married to have that time.
I think a lot of churches think that married people are safer because there is a mindset that they are more stable. But, that’s been pretty much proven wrong by every major statistic group showing the stability of marriages in the US.
So who is a better youth worker? The answer has me sitting on a fence. Again I think that every part of this series of Falsehoods in youth ministry is relevant. You just can’t box anyone in with any of this. There are amazing single people doing youth ministry. There are amazing married people doing youth ministry. In the perfect scenario you have both.
I know I don’t have this all figured out. Not even trying to admit I fully understand this. I have two of my staff getting married this summer/fall which will bring us up to 5 married people on my team but we also still have 7 who aren’t married. My reason for adding this in is because I don’t think churches should care and I want to know what you think.
Youth Ministry Falsehoods.
- You must be with students 24/7
- You must be young
- You must be single/married
- You must be irresponsible and fly by the Seat of your Pants.
- You must be theologically trained
- You must be an extrovert
- You must a great upfront communicator
- You must be wild and crazy and a kid magnet
- You must be willing to be poor
- You must want to be a “real” pastor some day
I just want to give another AMEN here. I see two problems. One, if you are single than they want to over work you. I was talking with Tanya recently and she was telling me about a church that wanted here to work on thanksgiving weekend because the church leadership married with kids were away and “She didn’t have a family.” That story always irked me because the mentality of churches assumes that if you are not married you are not part of a family.
Two, if you are married they want to under pay you. Which I am sure you will talk about in blog #9 of this series.